Search

Jazz Artist Residency

The Jazz Artist Residency, established in 2012, is an ongoing educational component of the MSM Jazz Department that pairs visiting jazz artists and educators with our students for a full week each semester. The goal of this project is to give students an in-depth appreciation for all facets of the jazz tradition from an outside professional. The guest artist-in-residence not only performs with each ensemble in the jazz department, but also gives lectures, clinics and lessons in improvisation, composition, theory, history and performance, ranging from broad to the very specific issues.

Terence Blanchard has made a name for himself as a top-tier jazz trumpeter from New Orleans and has gone on to enjoy a multifaceted career in jazz and beyond. He’s not only a five-time Grammy Award winner, but he’s also a renowned film-score and soundtrack composer. A veteran of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers (recommended by Wynton Marsalis as his replacement in 1983), Blanchard began his own recording career in a band co-led with saxophonist Donald Harrison before launching his solo career with his eponymous 1991 album.

Blanchard is renowned in jazz circles as a remarkable trumpeter, composer, arranger and bandleader. Vanity Fair writes, “He plays the most coolly expressive trumpet in jazz, transmuting the instrument’s repertoire of smears, growls, peeps and blasts into an astonishingly fluid language both luxurious and controlled.”

While recording and touring his own bands, Blanchard is the most prolific jazz musician to ever compose for motion pictures. Beginning in the early 1990s, he has enjoyed a special collaborative relationship with director Spike Lee as composer for all of Lee’s films from 1991’s Jungle Fever through 2008’s Miracle at St. Anna. Blanchard most recently contributed the score for Lucasfilm’s Red Tails, where he collaborated with producer George Lucas.

Add to those achievements Blanchard’s recent success composing for Broadway; an opera commissioned by Opera St. Louis (a poignant tale of welterweight boxing champion Emile Griffith with librettist Michael Cristofer); and his appointment as artistic director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s jazz series.

In addition to all musical contributions, Blanchard is a heralded leader of music education. “I’m very proud of the work I did as artistic director of the Monk Institute for 10 years,” he says. “It was hard leaving, but I had to move on. Becoming the artistic director of the Mancini Institute is really exciting for me. They are committed to cutting-edge education in the program, which is run by Shelly Berg. It’s a program with a vision. I’ve been in my first year, and he’s constantly talking about reshaping the program, re-evaluating what we’ve done and how to find out what students really need.” Blanchard attends the institute for one week every month and works with music students on improvisation, composition and performance.

On Blanchard’s latest album, Magnetic, critic Mark F. Turner writes, “Blanchard’s ideas are still thriving in his twentieth release and return to Blue Note with Magnetic—a vibrant recording colored with the usual consummate performances, and a modernist bent that’s replete with compelling themes”.